In Russia Cars Drive You

When you drive in Russia literally anything can happen - and does. If you watch the full 13 minutes of this video you'll see that the Russian driver has to be prepared for sheep, drunks, tires, trees, elks, front loaders, gun fights, power lines, helicopters, and even jet planes at any moment.

I haven't seen this many cars entertainingly crashed since the Blues Brothers. And yes wanton destruction makes me all tingly and happy inside.

And if you're wondering why there are so many Russian drivers with dash-board cams, the answer is simple: insurance claims.

Dash-cam footage is the only real way to substantiate your claims in the court of law. Forget witnesses. Hit and runs are very common and insurance companies notoriously specialize in denying claims. Two-way insurance coverage is very expensive and almost completely unavailable for vehicles over ten years old-the drivers can only get basic liability. Get into a minor or major accident and expect the other party to lie to the police or better yet, flee after rear-ending you. Since your insurance won't pay unless the offender is found and sued, you'll see dash-cam videos of post hit and run pursuits for plate numbers.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:38 PM | Comments (743)
Post contains 1645 words, total size 15 kb.

Michigan. Michigan? Yes, Michigan. This will make them the 24th Right to Work state in America.

more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:29 PM | Comments (261)
Post contains 287 words, total size 3 kb.

Every few years, Disney's earliest copyrights come close to expiring, and the GOP agrees to extend copyright protection -- although we are now at a ridiculous length of time.

Enough. The GOP should be taxing the shit out of the media, not doing it further favors.

Brito's incisive book tells tale after tale of government kowtowing to copyright holders. An egregious example is Mickey Mouse. "Each time the copyright ... was about to expire, and the happy rodent was about to become a shared cultural icon like Santa Claus, Hamlet, and Uncle Sam, Congress has extended the copyright term," Brito explains.

This is not at all what the founders had in mind when they authorized Congress "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. ... "

Retroactively extending the copyright on a work produced long ago cannot promote useful arts and sciences. It just enriches the copyright holder and denies access to everyone else -- which is exactly the point, if you're an industry lobbyist.

Once again, big business is aligned with big government and against open competition. So far, the party of free markets is on the wrong side.

Posted by: Ace at 03:15 PM | Comments (305)
Post contains 233 words, total size 2 kb.

Since Mad As Hell is out at Red Lobster eating like a King!!!, I guess we're permitted to relax.

So, here's a fun-time thread.

I have to mention this: Thank you to everyone who offered to guest blog. I will write back to you, soon.

However, I have now realized: My snap decision to take a vacation on Monday did not leave me enough time to actually arrange for my time off. So I'ma gonna push it back to the following week, which will give me all week to write a How to Blog email and send it out.

Thanks. So it'll be the following week.

I'll see if I can't get Mad as Hell to contribute some of his wisdom during my downtime.

Posted by: Ace at 02:18 PM | Comments (394)
Post contains 134 words, total size 1 kb.

"I am mad as hell" is one of those guys who posts in a blog's comments area and deems himself a Stalwart Patriot Hero for doing so. He's very certain that other people should be doing a lot of Very Serious Political writing and strategizing.

He himself? Well, he seems to limit his own contributions to the cause to sarcastic two-line statements in blog comments areas.

I hereby give "i am mad as hell" this opportunity to do all the political writing/commentary/strategizing he thinks we need. I sure hope he's got something to say, apart from insisting that other people get as serious and dedicated as he is.

Prove how serious and dedicated you are, "I am mad as hell." Your comments, if borderline cogent, will be elevated up to a Main Post.

So go, dude. You've got so much to say. Say it. I'll wait. Once you're done, I'll transfer your deep thoughts to the main blog.

I sure hope that you're not one of those Unappeasibly Angry Fellows who does nothing but rant that Something Must Be Done! without actually being wiling to do something yourself, or without having any idea of what should be done.

I sure hope that's not the case. I sure hope you've got more in your toolbox than constant bleats that We All Must Be More Serious!!!

So, wow me dude. Show me how it's done.

You might have to put down whatever videogame you're currently playing for this. Might take some work.

Definition Time: Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be having a good time.

Mad As Hell... says he can't Fight For the Cause, as he has to go out for dinner at a restaurant.

So, apparently, he's declared this particular hour as the hour we're all permitted some simple pleasures. (At least I assume we have the same leave he grants himself, but who knows, perhaps we're all still on the clock.)

So I guess make the most of this hour -- the hour mad as hell (maybe) is permitting you to not Fight For the Cause.

Posted by: Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (435)
Post contains 389 words, total size 2 kb.

We didn't hear this, surprisingly enough, before the election. What we heard was the claim that Obama wanted to raise taxes on the "richest 1%" (now the richest 2%; the second richest 1%, sorry, here's a tissue to wipe up your mouth). He claimed he wanted to reduce taxes on the middle class, and even claimed Romney would raise taxes on the middle class.

Which, by the way, was the lie he won the election on. By charging Romney with this, he immunized himself from the truth -- that Barack Obama himself planned to raise taxes on the middle class.

Now that the liberals have won an election on a lie, they can start floating these trial balloons to see if the public is ready for them.

And the truth is that if week keep spending at this level, the rich, the middle class, and even some of the working poor are going to have to pay more in taxes.

The money isn't "free." It comes from somewhere. Unfortunately, we can't tax the Germans as the Greeks can, so we'll have to tax ourselves.

I have long believed that Obama's goal was to set up a crisis situation whereby Republicans are forced to call for his own goal of higher taxes on everyone in order to forestall an actual meltdown and the ensuing calamity.

I've seen nothing yet to convince me I was crazy to think that.

Votre Bouche

Excusez-moi, il y avait une erreur inévitable avec mon pénis.

By the way, people are questioning why I'd learn French.

They are extremely racist. So, they've got that going for them.

Posted by: Ace at 01:09 PM | Comments (111)
Post contains 304 words, total size 2 kb.

I can't believe TFG is still president.

Four more years. Think about that. America is serving a medium-term prison sentence.

This is part of the reason I'm encouraging people to look to other things for happiness. I know it's going to be very difficult for me to get through this. For the past four years I've had a mindset of "Just get to January 13, 2013, and then it's all smooth sailing."

I'm having a difficult time ratcheting myself up for "Just get yourself to January 2017, and then we're on easy street, baby."

Speaking of hobbies, I discovered a fun podcast from Radio Lingua. They do a bunch of different shows -- Coffee Break Spanish, Coffee Break French, Coffee Break Italian, Coffee Break German -- where the idea is that they'll give you a language lesson in 15-20 minutes. Hence, "Coffee Break."

I started doing the French one over the Thanksgiving holiday. I really like it. One neat thing is that if you slap it on to your phone, you can listen to it while you're walking (or jogging, or working out, or driving, or laundry, or whatever).

Once I've mastered that bitch I'll move on to the one I really want to learn, Italian.

One thing here: The lessons are free but it's all audio, and some languages -- French, especially -- really require printed material to learn, because the spelling is frequently not what you'd imagine. (Lots of silent consonants.) So, if you were interested in doing this, you probably have to plan on buying a couple of language books at some point, so you can look up the spelling of, say, "travaillent." But you can get by with the first ten lessons or so without anything.

They all have a Premium subscription with, they say, more audio and printed lessons on the computer and stuff, but I haven't done that, and the prices look really, really high to me. I just got an old French textbook. That, and Google Translate. And About.com has a lot of articles on foreign languages.

I'm digging it. I'm not sure why I'm doing this but there is an element in satisfaction to it, kind of like leveling up in a video game, except obviously it's a skill with application outside of gaming (though those applications are kind of limited, too).

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:54 AM | Comments (439)
Post contains 402 words, total size 3 kb.

In the last post I wrote, "Let's do this, let's get crazy," and then remembered that that was once a catchphrase. It took me a few minutes and some searches to find it -- it was from Pat O'Brien's sex voicemails.

Very Strong Content Warning for the below items, as Pat O'Brien is very specific in his voicemails about the sexual shenanigans he's looking forward to.

The actual voicemails. (Very Strong Content Warning for Pat O'Brien's voicemail messages.)

And AllahPundit's old Strong Content Warning mash-up of Lionel Ritchie's "Hello" with Pat O'Brien's voicemails, plus the private correspondence of Pat O'Brien.

I have to throw a flag on myself here: Other people's sexual business is of course hilariously funny, whereas our own (or my own) is just mortifying and None of Your Business.

So, Hypocrite I. Okay.

But still, these are kind of funny.

Remember, content warning. Maybe this is more of a wait 'till you get home thing.

Posted by: Ace at 12:51 PM | Comments (62)
Post contains 172 words, total size 1 kb.

Karl argues he should at Hot Air, suggesting that the GOP might have to illustrate to the public how massive our spending is by actually ratcheting up taxes to finance all this spending.

At the moment, the public is not actually confronted with the cost of the expanding government because we're currently borrowing from China to pay for it (and will do so, until China realizes we can't cover our debts, in which case we're going to try some hyperinflation (which, of course, has always worked in the past)).

Let it burn.

Posted by: Ace at 11:15 AM | Comments (204)
Post contains 110 words, total size 1 kb.

There is a sort of language you use for in-group criticism and a rougher, ruder language you use for out-group criticism. Families fight, of course, and sometimes dreadfully, but among the criticisms are reinforcement of group solidarity.

In political parties, people can criticize the Establishment or people can criticize the Grassroots (or both), but if you're still affiliated with that group -- emotionally affiliated, feeling a feeling of kinship -- you use a different sort of language than you'd use to criticize the opposite party.

Although David Frum, for example, has many positions which are simply liberal and simply Democratic, the biggest tell that he's now actually a liberal Democrat (posing as a conservative for financial reasons) is the neverending hostile, demeaning, and trolling language he uses against the right. It's not the sort of language one uses to advance a policy; it's the sort of language one uses to pick a fight. And fighting with conservatives, many ex-Republicans are finding, is a lucrative gig.

It basically comes down to respect. Do you respect the people with whom you have disagreements? If you respect them, you may disagree with a particular position of idea, but you do not disapprove of them personally.

Once you cross that line -- showing disrespect for the right, and disapproval verging on loathing for the right -- I cannot credit you as being "a maverick within the conservative movement" or whatever other crap title you might want in your CNN chyron. Once you cross that line, you're not trying to persuade, you're merely trying to pummel. Once you cross that line, you're not a reformer or internal critic; you're simply on the other side.

Which brings me to an extremely hostile essay written by someone now looking to take the David Frum route of entrepreneurial punditry, a former RNC research director named David Welch. (Sidenote: What the hell is it with guys named David?)

Although there's a few points here I might agree with, partly to mostly, there is no mistaking this for anything but an angry screed, and a formal motion for divorce.

I support no-fault divorces. But what I can't support is what I'm guessing comes next, based on the lucrative career tracks of Andrew Sullivan and David Frum before him: His claim to not be divorced at all, but a loving and devoted spouse, who just happens to keep stabbing the conservative movement in the face and neck.

IT is a shame that William F. Buckley Jr. passed away in 2008. The conservative movement could use him - or someone like him - right now.

In the 1960s, Buckley, largely through his position at the helm of National Review, displayed political courage and sanity by taking on the John Birch Society, an influential anti-Communist group whose members saw conspiracies everywhere they looked.

Fast forward half a century. The modern-day Birchers are the Tea Party. By loudly espousing extreme rhetoric, yet holding untenable beliefs, they have run virtually unchallenged by the Republican leadership, aided by irresponsible radio talk-show hosts and right-wing pundits. While the Tea Party grew, respected moderate voices in the party were further pushed toward extinction. Republicans need a Buckley to bring us back.

Buckley often took issue with liberal-minded members of his party, like Nelson A. Rockefeller, and he gave some quarter to opponents of civil rights legislation. But he placed great faith in the Republican establishment and its brand of mainstream conservatism, which he called the "politics of reality."

But his biggest challenge came from the far right, primarily in the form of the John Birch Society.

And so on. While there is a remnant John Birch Society today, and you will occasionally read people (including in the comments area of this blog) claiming "it all went wrong when they booted out the JBS," we're talking, by my guess, one person in one hundred or one thousand. A potent strain of JBS thinking -- relentless conspiracy theorizing -- remains alive, as it has always been alive, on the left and on the right and in the uncategorizable politics of the idiosyncratically discontented fringe.

Let me just clear this up for the idiots: Conspiracy theorizing is a form of magical thinking (religious thinking applied to completely non-metaphysical objects), and as such is irrational, but it is not "conservative." It is a permanent strain of human thought because human beings always have and always will have a stubborn attraction to the irrational. Showtime, a major pay cable network owned by CBS, is currently featuring a ten part leftist conspiracy-theory take on American history. Those who wish to claim that the right is overly taken by the paranoid style of politics really need to address the fact that this style of thinking is so common, and so accepted, on the left, and indulged by the center-left, that billion-dollar companies will routinely air such errant lunacies and then have their arms stuffed full of Emmys and Peabody Awards granted by other members of the liberal-dominated industry.

The difference between left and right paranoid political thought is this: The left's paranoia has much better production values. But also, much greater penetration, including into the leadership/intellectual class. The leadership/intellectual class of the right almost universally reacts with hostility to any suggestion of conspiracy theorizing. The leadership/intellectual class of the left tends to either give it soft "Questions need to be asked" support, or else outright embraces it.

At any rate, while I can't stand all the damn conspiracy theories myself, I'm not looking to brand the right as irrational demon-haunted paranoiacs as this soon-to-be-a-featured-commentator-on-MSNBC David Welch is.

I can't argue with a few of his claims -- that we need to be much better about screening the flaky and the florid out of our political nominations.

But I do take issue with his insulting, hostile, F-you suggestion as to why we've had a bunch of bad candidates: That the right consists of little else but dumb, ignorant paranoid delusionals and the party is less in need of an overhaul than an IQ test and psych battery.

By the way, let's just take note of this:

The absence of a Buckley-esque gatekeeper today has allowed extreme, untested candidates to take center stage and then commit predictable gaffes and issue moon-bat pronouncements. Democrats have used those statements to tarnish the Republican Party as anti-woman, anti-poor, anti-gay, anti-immigrant extremists. Buckley's conservative pragmatism has been lost, along with the presidency and seats in Congress.

The Democrats and their allied Pet Media painted one very high-profile candidate as an anti-woman, anti-poor, anti-gay, anti-immigrant extremist, using his previous extremist remarks to destroy him.

That candidate was... Mitt Romney.

So... yeah. Let's not jerk ourselves off that if we just nominate, for example, a moderate, soft-spoken Northeasterner who is obviously an accepted member of the educated Boston-DC axis of academic, media, and corporate elite, and who is stewed in the mores of the Northeastern Ivy League/aristocratic dominant culture, then all of our troubles will be exorcised like bothersome ghosts.

Posted by: Ace at 10:10 AM | Comments (389)
Post contains 1195 words, total size 8 kb.